Tag Archives: cookies

This year I wanted to try a few more vegan recipes, especially in baking. I saw these cookies on mywifemakesand immediately wanted to try them. They turned out to be delicious and I will definitely make them again. No one would ever guess they’re vegan and they are really easy to make! The raw dough still tasted a bit coconutty but I couldn’t taste any coconut flavour in the baked cookies. I also used my homemade peanut butter which is a really quick 1-ingredient recipe, while store bought jars often include extra oils, salt or sugar.

Preheat the oven to 175°C, line a baking tray with parchment paper and roast the hazelnut for a few minutes.

To make the flax egg mix one tablespoon of ground flax seed with three tablespoons of water and set aside until it becomes gelatinous. In the meantime chop the nuts and the chocolate.

In a bowl whisk together the sugar, vanilla, coconut oil, peanut butter and flax egg. Add the flour, soda and baking powder and mix until everything is just incorporated. Then you can add the hazelnuts and the chocolate and carefully mix everything together. Drop the cookies with two spoons onto the tray or use your hands (I think hands are the easiest option) and flatten the cookies a bit. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake around 11-13 minutes. Let them cool down because they will be quite soft at first. Enjoy!

Since I’ve never had raw cookies, although I have seen some in the cafés, I thought it would be great to try that next. These were really easy to make and don’t need that many ingredients. For the chocolate chips you can of course buy ready made raw ones or just plain chocolate chips if you’re not a raw foodist. I decided to make some myself because I wanted to keep the recipe raw. I have to say that I definitely need to work on those. They are more like flat chocolate circles than chocolate chips but tasted great.

Start out with making the chocolate chips if you don’t want to buy any. Otherwise you can skip this step. This recipe makes around 6-7 cookies.

Carefully melt the cacao butter making sure that it doesn’t get hotter than 40-45°C. Mix in the cacao powder and sweetener. Spice with a bit of sea salt against the bitterness. I like my chocolate quite salty. Let it cool down a bit before piping chocolate drops on a piece of parchment paper. Let them set in the fridge and prepare the cookie dough.

Mix everything together with a bit of salt in a bowl forming a dough. Depending on what size cookies you like seperate the batter. Then roll each piece into a ball and flatten it afterwards. You can then add the chocolate chips or first make the cookies and put them on top later. I went with the second option because I made the cookies first and the chocolate wasn’t firm enough yet.

You can eat them right away at room temperature or let them set in the fridge for a bit. If you have chocolate chips left over store them in an airtight container for next time or melt the chocolate and spread it out on a parchment paper sprinkling it with dried berries. Enjoy!

I’ve been in the mood for some old fashioned baking. Especially since my attempts at making any salty dishes have lately failed miserably! Luckily this recipe succeeded beyond my expectations; I wouldn’t have thought such simple biscuits could taste so good.

The recipe is an old one, and like the name suggests, it was a treat to eat with coffee for the finer folk. The ingredients themselves are really simple, as is the recipe itself. I made the jam myself, but you can use a store bought one as well. Traditionally the biscuits are with raspberry or apple jam, but I made these with strawberry-basil.

If you want to make the jam yourself, it should be made first so it can cool down while you make the biscuits. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the recipe.

The butter should be semi-soft, so you should take it out of the fridge an hour before you start making the biscuits.

Mix the butter and sugars in a bowl with the dough hooks of the mixer. You don’t need to make it foamy since these will be shortbread type of cookies. Mix the flour and the potato starch together and sieve it into the butter-sugar mixture. Whisk the dough quickly with the dough hooked mixer – do not knead it, or otherwise the cookies will be firm and not soft and crumbly.

Let the dough rest in the fridge for an hour or so.

Preheat the oven to 175°C and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Roll the dough out to about half a centimeter thickness. Use a bit of flour if necessary. Cut the biscuits with a round (4 cm or smaller, depending on your preferences) cutter and bake for around 7 minutes or until lightly coloured. Let the biscuits cool down.

Spread some jam on half of the biscuits and sandwich together with the remaining ones. Roll them carefully in some sugar.

If you’re using fresh strawberries, crush them in a large bowl until they’re mash.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, mix together the strawberries, sugar and basil. Stir them on low heat until the sugar has dissolved, then increase the heat until the mixture boils. If you want the jam to be clearer in colour, take the foam off with a spoon.

Stir the jam often and let it boil for 20 minutes. Take the jam off the heat and puree it with a hand blender.

If you want to get rid of the strawberry seeds, pass it through a fine sieve and let it cool down.

If there is jam left after filling the biscuits you can put it in a jar in the fridge. It will stay good for a while.

I made this a while ago when Tiia and I had an indoor picnic. The shortbread was really easy to make and my first try turned out really well.

Today, as the sun is shining into the living room, I decided to make another batch so I could post the recipe here. It’s taken from Annie Bells’ “The Picnic Cookbook”, which offers a lot of fresh and easy recipes for picnics, barbecues and parties.

The shortbread is a basic recipe which you can adjust however you like. Add more lemon to make lemon shortcake or orange zest, chocolate…basically whatever you feel like. I’m thinking about making a lime coconut one next time. Enough with the talking, here is the recipe:

Preheat the oven to 150°C and grease a baking tin. I used a 26 ∅ cm springform. It makes quite thin shortbreads, so if you want them thicker, you should use a smaller tin.

Whisk the butter with the sugar and add the lavender oil. I only used 9 drops (the book recommended 15) because lavender tastes quite strong and I didn’t want to get the feeling of eating soap. I would advise to taste the batter after a few drops to see if it’s not too much for you.

Add the flours, lemon zest and a few dried lavender flowers. Part of my rice flour was self-made since I had made rice milk from roasted rice last week. I let the leftovers dry and then ground them in the food processor. It was still more coarse than the bought one, but it seemed to be really nice for the crumbliness of the shortbread. However, you can of course just use normal rice flour.

When everything is mixed, it should be all crumbly.

Press it into the tin but be careful not to compress it too much. It should be still crumbly.

Bake for 30 minutes, then put the oven off and leave the shortbread there for another 5 minutes. Take it out, sprinkle some sugar on top and some more lavender flowers. Let it cool down before removing the tin and cutting the shortbread. Enjoy!

I have always liked Italian almond cookies. They just go so well with coffee and they last forever. If you can keep your hands of the cookie jar that is!

Both recipes are really easy to make and they don’t take much preparing. The ricciarelli need 2 – 3 hours of resting time but the dough is made really fast.

The cantuccini recipe is a basic recipe (originally from here) you can change up easily. Add chocolate, pistachios or dried berries to have some variety and new taste to them. I put some lemon zest in to add some freshness.

Preheat the oven to 200°C and line one or two trays with parchment paper.

Cut the almonds a bit smaller. It will be easier to cut the biscotti later when they come out of the oven the first time.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and vanilla sugar. Knead in the butter and eggs until you get a sticky dough. Then add the almonds. Wrap the dough into a foil and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes cut the dough roughly into 6 pieces and roll each piece into long rolls of around 1,5-2,5 cm depending on how big you want the cantuccini to be.

Put the rolls on the tray and bake for 15 minutes. Take them off and let them cool down a bit. I think I waited around 10 minutes as I found it easier to cut them before they were cooled down completely.

Cut them diagonally and put them back on the tray cut side down.

Bake them for another 10 minutes. They should be golden brown. When completely cooled down you can put them into a cookie jar or cookie tin. It’s also a nice idea to wrap them up and give them away as a present.

The ricciarelli are nice and soft in the middle and taste a bit like marzipan. I had been looking for a decent recipe for a while and came along this (scroll to the middle of the page).

Mix the almond flour with the sugar and 100 g of the powder sugar with the baking powder and orange zest. Beat the egg whites in a tall bowl until they’re firm and glossy. You can now add them with the bitter almond to the almond mixture.

Use a spoon to incorporate the eggs slowly. Don’t use a hand mixer since the eggs will lose all shape and the dough won’t be fluffy.

When everything is mixed, form little loaves of around 3 cm out of the dough.

Roll them in the left over powder sugar, put them on a tray and flatten them a bit with your fingers.

They now need to rest for around 2-3 hours before you can bake them in the oven for around 25 minutes on 140°C. They should be soft on the inside, so check them before the time is over since they might take a few minutes less!

These also make nice gifts if you can handle not eating them before. Enjoy!

Stef

Rum raisin cookies, cantuccini and ricciarelli which I wrapped up as Christmas presents